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Windows 7: Slow menu delays file open etc.

There are lots of ways of seeing this slow action, the easiest demo is this:

Open Notepad.

Press ctrl-o - to open a file.

Watch Notepad's menu items slowly grey out, taking 3 seconds.

When they are all greyed out the file 'Open' window appears.

(You can nearly see the 'Open' window components building, but that's not this issue)

If you try the same action on XP the 'Open' window appears instantly.

(I've just noticed another twist on this, if the 'Open' window covers over the NotePad menu items, and then you press escape (or click close). The greyed out menu items slowly appear in turn through the 'Open' window, and then the 'Open' window disappears. It's quicker if the 'Open' window doesn't cover Notepad. Again XP is instant.)

It gets worse in other situations. Notepad++ has many more items, takes longer.
This greying-out of menu items happens every time the window loses focus.

I noticed this first with VistaSwitcher which doesn't appear until the greying-out is complete, so the frequent alt-tabbing between windows is slowed by a few seconds depending on what I'm switching away from.

Nothing unusual. This is a corporate PC, with over-active AV, and most of the time on a corp network where malware gets detected (not Sony). Now I have only 1 W7 PC but on Monday I can try others. Some will have different display settings. Please would you try the simple test with notepad and let me know?

Pressing Ctrl+o instantly greys out notepad and at the same time instantly opens the open file window. There is no delay at least not one I can discern.

The reverse is the same; When I press escape or close with the open file window covering notepad it happens instantaneously, the file window closes and notepad is not greyed out, at least not that I can discern.

There is no rendering delay in either direction at least not one I can discern.

That is the crux of the situation, the machine you're seeing this on has a rendering problem, be it onboard graphics, through a separate GPU, video card or the over-active AV.

You mention that this is happening at work in a network environment:

If you have the authority talk to the IT Dept. (ITD) if you have one and explain it to them.

If you don't have the authority, talk to your Boss, explain it, and have him ask the ITD to see you.

If you don't have an ITD and neither you nor your boss wants to investigate and fix this problem you'll have to hire a computer consulting firm if you don't already have one to look into this for you.

There could be motherboard, CPU, GPU, operating system or server updates needed.

You could have the entity (a computer consulting firm?) that set up the AV check to see if there are permissions that need to be allowed or reset.

The problem could lie with network servers if they are incorporated within your network. Some corporations set up the servers where everything, from the operating system, to programs and files are kept on the server, and the individual workstations only act as rendering agents for the server, humm..that sounds familiar.

When's the last time anyone has done a Server or Disk Cleanup?

If this workstation and network are wireless there could be radio frequency interference. If not and its wired is your network cabling shielded?

Information

The biggest source of interference was from the computer network which, in this case, consists of a small number of PCs connected through a network switch with Cat 5e cable. The computer network produced a comb of carriers spaced about 30.5 kHz apart that made reception difficult above 17 MHz (see figure below).
This RFI was a problem only when a computer was plugged into a network hub or switch. Clamping large ferrites over the network cables and the switch's power cable had little effect.
Changing to a D-Link DGS-1016D network switch, which is in a metal box instead of the plastic case used by the previous hub and switch, reduced the RFI from S7 to S3 (where background noise was S2) on some frequencies. However, other frequencies still had RFI at S6-S7.The RFI was reduced from S7 to nearly undetectable levels when the Cat 5e cable was replaced with shielded Cat 5e cable.

Anak, Thanks for trying it. I'm seeing the problem with the laptop not on any net. I'll look at a few others on Monday. Assuming they have the same clean performance as yours then it must be a setting I've chosen (Classic+performance) or something installed (a long list). I can change settings and uninstall things. I.T. dept would only help if they think it serious, and it's still there with all I've installed removed. I'll let you know.

So I have another PC at work, with nominally the same settings, does not have the problem. On the problem PC I made a new account, non-corp, and that didn't have the problem. So I rebooted, again, that invoked windows updates, and now the problem is gone. I'm half expecting it to come back once I have used everything. Thanks for your interest and help.

You're welcome, It's great to hear you were able to fix the problem and thank you for coming back and posting about it.

A corrupt user account, and new updates with the new account? I'll have to remember that. I wonder if this had something to do with the December KB3004394 update? It caused problems with root certificates and video drivers.
What caught my attention was your mention that when you used the new account it went and checked for updates and now, all is well.

If your machine keeps running okay I would delete that old account if you haven't already, and then if you would, come back here and mark your thread solved as it could help other members solve their problem.
If the problem reoccurs you can always un-mark it and we can pick up where we left off.

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